Elastos Weekly Updates – 12 October 2018

“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, we are happy when we are growing”

-William Butler Yeats

This week the Elastos Carrier nodes on TV boxes reached 230,000, the fourth meeting of the Elastos Ecosystem Fund was held in New York City and ELA fish will soon become certified digital assets on the Elastos sidechain.

Elastos continued its forward momentum, lets recap.

Technical Dynamics

1. The mobile wallet APP for Trinity browser multi-signing function is completed, it now supports the creation of multiple wallets

2. Completed the function of registering sidechains on the main chain

3. The developer test for Token chain is complete and has now entered the system test phase

4. Completed the POW+DPOS prototype verification and began to integrate the prototype into the main chain code

5. Completed the Ethereum sidechain interface to provide SPV verification instructions for the Ethereum side chain

6. Determined the DPoS majority arbitrator’s response plan

7. Released test coin faucets to facilitate community developers to develop tests on the Elastos test chain

*Please note that this wallet is strictly for the testnet ELA tokens, sending your mainnet ELA to this wallet will result in them being lost forever

Slightly Less Technical Summary: The mobile wallet app for Trinity browser continues to receive more updates and more features as multi-signing function is now available. There are several sidechains that have been in development for quite some time such as the token sidechain, Ethereum sidechain, NEO sidechain, etc. The token sidechain is now in the final stages of testing. ERC20 and ERC721 compatible smart contracts were successfully executed in the migrated NEO VM and the main chain code is now undergoing some development to finally integrate the prototype of PoW+DPoS before it goes live sometime early next year. Elastos Carrier has also received a major upgrade where it now supports group API to handle group messages. Last but not least, the development of cloud distributed storage services and the second phase of Elastos Runtime development have begun.

Community News

The number of TV boxes actively equipped with Elastos Carrier Service has reached 230,000 consumer owned units! The top 5 brands of factory-installed boxes are: Diyomate, Mango, Lingyun, Myzinda, Tasu. We are well on our way to 1m active Carrier nodes!

“Zach Warsavage, North American Strategist of Elastos, the decentralized smart-web operating system, urged Congress to do its own research on Blockchain technology:”

Emboldened by Dr. Roubini’s fear-mongering testimony, Senator Doug Jones questioned the dangers that come with blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, when it comes to money laundering, human trafficking, and more. Although these are the questions that need to be asked and answered, one thing people frequently fail to realize is that all transactions are tracked and recorded on a public ledger — the last thing criminals want.

Congress needs some serious education on this new technology, and fast, before other countries take the lead on an industry that will not only make the vast majority of our processes and industries more efficient, but will also create jobs, grow the economy, and become a global mechanism of trust. It is time for the United States to lead on blockchain — not fear it.

October 7

Feng Han participated in the US-China Relations Conference, hosted by the Columbia University Greater China Initiative in New York. Opening with US-Relations, Feng Han described the era of digital wealth that we are now facing. Elastos will be the trustworthy internet of the future, and is a network of wealth for digital asset ownership and transfer. Like the Elastos ecosystem collaborative project WeFilmChain, it is extremely possible that the movie industry’s pain points could be relieved by turning digital movies into investable assets. Feng Han concluded by summarizing that in the blockchain space, it is necessary to adhere to the concept of value investing and invest in prosperous community projects that have vision and real application.

October 11

KP hosted a Cyber Republic Virtual meetup with a presentation by a community member, Famous Amos which was titled, “Then to now – The Elastos Evolution”

Agenda of the meetup is as follows:

Recap since last virtual meetup

Questions from the community

Upcoming meetups

Presentation by a community member, “Then to know – The Elastos Evolution”

Community Contributions

Elastos Interview Series

This week we interview a team member based in China, he is the PR Director of Elastos, meet Cheng Hao.

Let’s start with an introduction, tell us about yourself and how long have you been at Elastos and how were you first introduced?

I was introduced to blockchain technology through my graduate studies which were in Chinese Law, Regulation and Public Opinion Research. Blockchain projects in China have been undergoing strict regulatory supervision. The anonymity and lack of regulation in a new and emerging technology such as blockchain has been extremely challenging for policy research and it spiked my curiosity. I think that regulation of this kind of technology and circulation of digital assets in the past year has set off some really huge waves in society. My connection with Elastos took place under this background and last August, I was an early investor participating in the Elastos project.

In November of 2017, before the international public offering, some of the community members were concerned about the uncertainty of token allocations, and because I was in Beijing, I communicated with the Chief Architect, Yipeng Su, during which time I discovered that the Elastos technical team would often work until very late at night, and that showed me their commitment, stability and reliability. During my communications with the team, I found that I strongly agreed with the Elastos core values of community driven operations.

Shortly thereafter, I submitted a few essays to Elastos. To this day, when you search for Elastos in Chinese, the article I wrote to promote Elastos is still towards the top of the list. Rong Chen and Yipeng Su guided and corrected the technical portion of my article. This process actually gave me a real feeling of accomplishment.

Later, I helped organize the G3 Blockchain Summit and pertinent PR messaging. The board of directors officially issued an invitation to me and in the later part of January, I officially joined the Elastos team. Fortunately, this was just in time to help plan and participate in the Launch Ceremony of Elastos that was held in Singapore.

How does it feel like to be working at Elastos?

Elastos is an extremely strong team. During our time working together, many partners have staunchly held onto their ELA, while discussing the value of Elastos and the technical plans together. Day and night, the important process of tackling a multitude of challenges takes place. At the same time, under the cohesion of Rong Chen and Feng Han, the original employees of Kortide (Rong Chen‘s former company) joined the Elastos team, especially, two former Chief Engineers of Kortide, Yipeng Su and Jingyu Niu, as well as others, who all help to materialize this amazing technology. There are many young prodigies on the Chinese team along with the experienced veterans: many of us joined the team after being a community member because everyone strongly agrees with the community values and everyone treats each other in an upstanding and honest way. We have very strong inclusiveness and collaboration, management operations are extremely strong, and there is a lot of room to embody your values as both an individual and as part of the team.

3. Being the PR Director, what are your duties and where are you based?

Our domestic PR group has five people in total. The members of the Beijing PR group are smart, driven, and enthusiastic and handle outgoing communications on Chinese media channels. We have also established connections with all kinds of exchanges and media outlets that release Elastos content through their distribution channels. Early on, we assisted community members with completing a large amount of Chinese-English translation work. A large part of hosting major Elastos events is accomplished through the deep participation and implementation of the PR team, such as the Elastos Singapore Launch Ceremony, the first Elastos Hackathon in Beijing, Chinajoy, the Anniversary in Thailand, etc. This also includes some community development responsibilities. Currently, there are approximately tens of thousands of people in the Chinese community spread across many different channels. Due to internet regulation and user preferences, there are many challenges with using a professional, blockchain-specific community messaging platform such as Telegram in the Chinese community. Most Chinese community members are on WeChat or in QQ groups. These groups have a maximum cap on the number of users.

In August, we recruited some volunteers from the community to gradually transfer the Chinese-language community to Telegram and in the future, we will share much more content in the Telegram group so that more people can participate in the bilingual conversations that are happening there and further increase Chinese-English community interaction and exchange.

4. You have been at Elastos for a long time, how has the progress been over these months?

Regarding the disclosure of technical updates and partnership development, I have developed a strict PR system and workflow. If we want to release any information, we communicate with our Western team about synching it. This is an extremely important process for coordinating the Chinese and English speaking international communities, giving equal preference to both communities.

Elastos has completed the DID, side chain development, and the alpha version of Elastos Trinity in the last year. In my opinion, this marks the completion of an extremely unique Elastos technological node. In the second half of this year, I personally am very much looking forward to the migration of mature sidechains and the transformation of the DPoS consensus mechanism, as well as the ELA supernode campaign.

5. What is your opinion on the communications between the East and the West?

There is not a lot of difference between the East and West. We have common goals, needs and beliefs where everyone is a part of Elastos. A Chinese leader once said, “It does not matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.”

I hope that in the future, extremely decentralized rules can emerge in Elastos. I personally am extremely optimistic about the direction of development for the CR. Despite the language difference between the East and West, disparity in economic development, as well as differences in history, customs and beliefs, everyone endorses Elastos and holds shared values, allowing everyone to come together; strong rules will let everyone build more trust; and I am very much looking forward to the existence of extremely clear community governance rules and the emergence of community-based assets that implement an extremely transparent community governance organization. Elastos aims to create a safe and trustworthy decentralized next-gen internet and the CR aims to simultaneously create a safe and trustworthy decentralized community organization. The development of each will compliment that of the other. If there is an issue with either one, the development of Elastos would be restricted.

6. What challenges do you face in this position and how are you trying to solve them?

I think that an important question facing the blockchain industry is how to avoid the loss in confidence that occurs during a bear market.

But I am not worried because I see that Elastos has weathered the difficulties of the industry through the following:

Making major technological innovations, Elastos has good scalability, and in the future will have usability and interoperability of sidechains, and will be a leader of blockchain technology. Elastos’ ability to expand beyond blockchain will be a disruptive innovation. The Elastos Runtime will provide traditional apps with security and trust and also provide traditional legacy internet apps with security and trust.

On the other hand, the capital operations for blockchain projects will be a big test. In this respect, the advantage that Elastos has over other projects lies in its use of BTC as an objective, which combats a lot of risk. In another respect, capital operations must emphasize restraint and savings. Currently, the entire business group is pushing for independent settlement of business expenses. Speaking from my group, we put an end to some large-scale, grandiose event expenses to emphasize that the focal point is on community users and ecosystem users, highlighting cost performance. In my opinion, due to lack of supervision and price decline, the blockchain industry will have a very deep reshuffle. In the next few years, some projects without technological innovation or practical applications will die out in large numbers, and the projects that survive in this war of extinction will be the stars of the next wave in the industry.

In the second half of the year, along with the transformation of DPoS, more organizations and ELA holders will participate in the election of super nodes and CR committee elections, which will bring more long-term success to ELA. In the long run, more applications will use ELA as their inner scenario. Recently, everyone is talking about the emergence of a standard for a killer DApp. In my view, this is the standard: utilized by a large number of users (over 100k DAU users), in-app circulation of large-scale data assets ($1MM USD level asset circulation). At present, exchanges can become DApps, which can spread information about digital asset to more people while also bringing convenience to many users. In fact, each exchange has expanded into different kinds of outstanding blockchain currencies, bringing a wave of sharp rises in the industry, as exchanges are also fighting for operations and services; however, the exchanges do not have much technological innovation. Aside from bringing more circulation to the digital currencies, they do not provide more opportunities for content consumption. With the development of blockchain technology, Elastos technology and service solutions will cause more DApp applications to emerge. I believe that will be the next wave of future blockchain development.

Future PR work will also provide publicity centering around the supernode election to follow changes to the Elastos consensus mechanism, CR governance, and more application scenarios. This will strengthen communication and coordination between the Chinese- and English-speaking communities and make sure that content is synched.

CR assets belong to the whole community. We need CR to be off to a good start as soon as it is established. We will implement the CR system throughout the Elastos community organization process and establish greater trust among CR community members to promote the active participation and contributions of community members in the CR governance.

7.What do you enjoy doing in your time off from work?

Outside of work, I like to spend time with my family. I am thankful for my partner and my family for working so hard for their job and family that I can get a balance between them. I also like to visit nature, as well as swim, ride my bike, play video games, and take photos. I also try to find the time to communicate with friends and experts in the blockchain industry about trends in the development of blockchain, policy and regulations, economic models and ideas about project operations. Oftentimes, smart conversation is a source of inspiration and new ideas.